People with legacy Workspace accounts are getting free extra storage

Giving people something for free and then slowly nudging them toward a paid subscription is a technological story as old as time. But a group of people with decade-old G Suite (now Google Workspace) accounts scored a rare victory: keeping their free accounts, well, free. And due to a recent change, some are even getting extra storage at no cost – but it’s unclear what will happen next.

Now, some of those people with old accounts are getting more good news. Until June 2022, Google continued to allow legacy users to add more individual storage to their accounts with a separate subscription. But last week, account owners who chose to pay for that extra space I started receiving emails from Google saying that your storage subscriptions have been cancelled. They got a refund of their last payment, but the best news was at the end of the message: “Although the subscription has been cancelled, your storage limit has not changed and you do not need to take any action.”

Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson confirmed On the edge that these users will be able to keep the extra storage space It is keep their legacy accounts: “Customers who received this notification will maintain their storage quota and will be able to continue using their existing accounts.” She tells us that the change also applies to people who have already switched to Workspace accounts but still have user-managed storage through Google Play — according to a support pageindividual storage will not be added to pooled storage totals.

For now, it looks like people who have maintained free G Suite accounts for over a decade will continue to do so – with a bonus of free storage too, in some cases. There’s no guarantee that Google won’t change its mind in the future, but until then, it’s a good deal.